On Zen Practice: Body, Breath, and Mind

ON ZEN PRACTICE

Wisdom Publications

199 Elm Street

Somerville MA 02144 USA

www.wisdompubs.org

© 2002 Zen Center of Los Angeles

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

On Zen practice: body, breath, mind / edited by Taizan Maezumi and Bernie Glassman ; revised by Wendy Egyoku Nakao and John Daishin Buksbazen ; foreword by Robert Aitken.—1st Wisdom ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-86171-315-X (alk. paper)

1. Spiritual life—Zen Buddhism. 2. Spiritual life—Sōtōshū. 3. Sōtōshū—Doctrines. I. Maezumi, Hakuyū Taizan. II. Glassman, Bernard (Bernard Tetsugen). III. Nakao, Wendy Egyoku. IV. Buksbazen, John Daishin, 1939–

BQ9288.O6 2002

294.3’444—dc21                      2002007543

Print ISBN 978-0-86171-315-8

eBook ISBN 978-0-86171-735-4

16 15 14 13 12

7   6   5   4   3

Interior by Gopa & Ted2. Cover design by Laura Shaw Feit. Photograph of Bernie Glassman courtesy of Peter Cunningham. All other photographs courtesy of Zen Center of Los Angeles Archives.

Source for Fukanzazengi: Principles of Seated Meditation by Dogen Zenji, translated by Carl Bielefeldt: Carl Bielefeldt, Dogen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Reprinted by permission.

Wisdom Publications’ books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for the permanence and durability of the Production Guidelines for Book Longevity set by the Council on Library Resources.

Printed in the United States of America.

This book was produced with environmental mindfulness. We have elected to print this title on 30% PCW recycled paper. As a result, we have saved the following resources: 7 trees, 12 million BTUs of energy, 667 lbs. of greenhouse gases, 3,010 gallons water, and 191 lbs. of solid waste. For more information, please visit our website, www.wisdompubs.org. This paper is also FSC certified. For more information, please visit www.fscus.org.

Contents

Preface by Wendy Egyoku Nakao and John Daishin Buksbazen

Foreword by Robert Aitken

I. INTRODUCTION

Why Practice?

Taizan Maezumi

Can Everyone Realize True Nature?

Taizan Maezumi

II. ON FORM

Fukanzazengi: Principles of Seated Meditation

Eihei Dogen

Commentary on Dogen Zenji’s Fukanzazengi

Taizan Maezumi

Breathing in Zazen

Koryu Osaka

What Is Sesshin?

Taizan Maezumi

On Gassho and Bowing

Taizan Maezumi with John Daishin Buksbazen

On Sitting

Koryu Osaka

The Practice of Effort

Taizan Maezumi

Receiving the Precepts

Taizan Maezumi

Is Zazen a Religion?

Ko’un Yamada

III. ON SHIKANTAZA AND KOANS

Dogen Zenji and Enlightenment

Ko’un Yamada

Notes on Koan Study

Bernie Glassman

On Enlightenment, Koans, and Shikantaza

Koryu Osaka

Koan Practice and Shikantaza

Hakuun Yasutani

Working with Mu

Koryu Osaka

Pacifying the Mind

Koryu Osaka

On Roso Faces the Wall

Taizan Maezumi

On Nansen Kills a Cat

Taizan Maezumi

IV. ON THE WAY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The Way of Everyday Life (Shobogenzo Genjokoan)

Eihei Dogen

Commentary on the Way of Everyday Life

Taizan Maezumi

V. APPENDICES

Appendix I. The Sixteen Precepts

Appendix II. Bodhisattva’s Precepts and the Capacity for Bodhisattva’s Precepts

Appendix III. The Benefits of the Three Treasures

Appendix IV. Lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi

Glossary

About the Authors

Index

Publisher’s Acknowledgment

The Publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous help of the Hershey Family Foundation in sponsoring the production of this book.

Ascending to the high seat, Dogen Zenji said:

"Zen Master Hogen studied with Keishin Zenji. Once Keishin

Zenji asked him, ‘Joza, where do you go?’

"Hogen said, ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’

"Keishin said, ‘What is the matter of your pilgrimage?’

"Hogen said, ‘I don’t know.’

"Keishin said, ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’

Hogen suddenly attained great enlightenment.

Master Dogen said:

If I were there, I would have said to Priest Jizo, ‘Not knowing is the most intimate. Knowing is also the most intimate. Let’s leave intimacy for the most intimate. Then tell me: with what are you the most intimate?’

—Eihei Dogen, Eihei Koroku

Preface

IN 1976, the Zen Center of Los Angeles published its first book, On Zen Practice. This was followed the next year by a companion volume, On Zen Practice II, and in 1978, by a more polished work, The Way of Everyday Life, a translation Dogen Zenji’s masterwork, Shobogenzo Genjokoan, and a commentary on it.

On Zen Practice I and II were essentially a collection of Dharma talks and commentaries on classic Zen texts, which introduced to American Zen students the foundational themes of sitting, sesshin, the Precepts, koan study, and the writings of the great master Dogen Zenji.

In their original form, the talks were homespun transcriptions, couched in the idiom of the time and addressed to a population of new Dharma students who were encountering the Dharma in America for the first time.

Taizan Maezumi Roshi arrived in the United States in 1956, serving for more than ten years as a Soto Zen missionary to the Japanese-American community in Los Angeles. In 1967, he and a few American students started the Los Angeles Zendo, later to become ZCLA, in a house in the Wilshire District. For another ten years, he patiently sat zazen, completing his own koan study with both Hakuun Yasutani Roshi and Koryu Osaka Roshi in a series of visits between Japan and the United States.

By this point, becoming Dharma successor to these two teachers, as well as his father, the Soto master Baian Hakujun Kuroda Roshi, he was ready to focus his energies on teaching American Zen practitioners.

Maezumi Roshi’s teaching style reflected the profound influence of each of these three masters. Often he would comment that with Yasutani Roshi he had trained in the meticulous examination of koans, while from Koryu Roshi, he inherited the dynamic exposition of the Dharma as his legacy.

From his father (the lineage now transmitted by him and his successors), Maezumi Roshi learned and embodied the everyday functioning of the Dharma in its most ordinary and yet most profound expression. Always quietly reflective, Maezumi Roshi is remembered by his students for his refined yet vigorous personal style, laced with self-effacing humor and extraordinary depth of subtlety.

This book is a compilation of the teachings of all of these masters, as well as of Dharma brother Ko’un Yamada Roshi, another successor of Yasutani Roshi, and the teacher of Robert Aitken Roshi as well as numerous Christian clerics. Also included in this edition is an article by Bernie Glassman, Maezumi Roshi’s senior Dharma disciple.

Maezumi Roshi was fond of telling how his mother, Mrs. Yoshi Maezumi Kuroda, shaped his character from his earliest years. She would often exhort her sons to do something for the Dharma long before any of them had any idea what that meant. In this fashion, however, a seed was planted and that seed came to full fruition for Maezumi Roshi in the years that followed.

In preparing this formidable body of seminal texts for publication, we found the task to be one not only of preserving the original nuance and flavor, but also of rendering more accessible what were often spontaneous commentaries. Maezumi Roshi’s use of language was both inimitable and idiosyncratic and, to those not accustomed to his voice, perhaps at times somewhat opaque. It is with this in mind, therefore, that we undertook to at once convey the subtleties of his style and spirit, while rendering them meaningful to readers encountering him for the first time.

As editors of this volume and the beneficiaries of many years of his teaching, we offer our efforts with profound gratitude to him. May the merits of these teachings reflect his wisdom and compassion, and whatever shortcomings our renderings may have be attributed solely to us.

We wish to gratefully acknowledge the White Plum Asanga (Dharma successors in Maezumi Roshi’s lineage), all members of the White Plum Asanga, and especially the sangha of ZCLA Buddha Essence Temple, for their encouragement and support of this project.

Our deep appreciation also to our editor and collaborator at Wisdom Publications, Josh Bartok, whose skillful work and creative understanding greatly helped in bringing these writings to their present form.

Wendy Egyoku Nakao

John Daishin Buksbazen

Zen Center of Los Angeles

Buddha Essence Temple

February 21, 2002

Foreword

to the original edition of On Zen Practice, volume 1

ONCE, MANY YEARS AGO, I heard a Buddhist priest speak at a Bodhi Day ceremony to an assembly of congregations from all Buddhist temples in Honolulu. His subject was the dual nature of the Buddhadharma: wisdom and compassion. To my great disappointment, however, he could not bring these two themes together. They remained separate, and a wonderful opportunity to present the essence of deep realization was lost.

Truly, compassion and wisdom are the same thing. When Bodhidharma came from India to China, Zhigong, the advisor to Emperor Wu of Liang, rightly identified him as the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. The archetypes of Bodhidharma, embodying fierce discipline and consummate wisdom, and Avalokiteshvara, embodying love and compassion, have reflected the two aspects of the same human being, wise compassion and loving wisdom. In these pages of On Zen Practice, the timeless nature of the Dharma as wisdom-compassion is vividly presented.

Ummon Bun’en Zenji (Yunmen Wenyan, d. 949 c.e.) taught this by the model of a box and its lid. There must be a perfect fit. Reading the record of his instruction, we find a wide variety of styles. Each of his responses, however, like each of the responses of every authentic master, is cued to the time, the place, and the circumstances of the encounter. Included in the latter would be the exact nature of the student’s need. You don’t feed a baby a hot pepper, no matter how hungry the child may be. Such is the wisdom of compassion and the compassion of wisdom. It is hard to meet an authentic master of Zen Buddhism, but here we have one in Taizan Maezumi Roshi. He is a dharma successor in all important streams of Zen, and has established an exemplary Zen center and gathered about him many talented disciples. There is no need to look further for a master of wisdom-compassion.

True mastery is many things. It is breadth of mind and spirit and the avoidance of division. Implicit in On Zen Practice is acknowledgement that multiple themes, even disparate views, form the tapestry of correct Zen teaching. It is not shikantaza alone, but also koan study. It is not the Soto or the Rinzai or the Harada stream of teaching, but all of them as a coherent and dynamic whole. It is not simply roshi, or even roshi and senior disciples, but roshi and all his students. It is not priest or lay person or scholar, but a community. Truly there are no barriers.

I have heard many teachers speak warmly of their own masters, quoting them continually. But in On Zen Practice, we find a remarkable spectrum of Zen teachers, and we can sense the gratitude of Maezumi Roshi and his disciples to them all.

It is not a random selection, however. Beginning with Maezumi Roshi himself, these are talented and unique maestros of their art. Yasutani Roshi, one of Maezumi Roshi’s principal teachers, sacrificed all social prestige and devoted himself solely to teaching and writing, living in the lowliest of circumstances. His fiery spirit still burns fiercely in his successors and on the pages of his many books.

Koryu Osaka Roshi is an equally splendid teacher who was never ordained a priest. Like Yasutani Roshi, he devoted himself to lay disciples, many of them college students. Maezumi Roshi studied with Koryu Roshi also, first in his college days, and much later as a conclusion of his formal training. I didn’t get to know Koryu Roshi as well as I did Yasutani Roshi, but I remember him vividly from his one visit to the Maui Zendo, when a mild little man with the uncertainties of one almost blind suddenly became Mt. Fuji itself thundering the Dharma in a teisho.

Ko’un Yamada Roshi, Dharma brother of Maezumi Roshi in Yasutani Roshi’s line, was my own Zen master. I knew him to be an exacting teacher whose breadth of spirit matches Maezumi Roshi’s own and attracted crowds of Christians as well as Buddhists to his modest dojo in Kamakura.

Finally, students at the Zen Center of Los Angeles are represented here in a Dharma talk by Maezumi Roshi’s senior Dharma successor, Tetsugen Glassman Sensei, and in the splendid production of this publication, in which John Daishin Buksbazen had a key role. We gain a vivid sense of enlightened Sangha spirit from them all.

We learn in Zen practice the infinitely precious nature of each particular entity, person, animal, plant, thing, and their complete equality. It is not an easy path. It is not easy to brush away the delusions that cloud emancipating truth. Without religious devotion, Zen becomes a kind of hobby. Without the Great Death and Great Rebirth, it becomes a kind of self-improvement exercise. It is not a subject to be mastered with a certain form or a certain curriculum, but a lifetime training. Yet with the devotion and rebirth so clearly manifest here, how easy it all is!

Robert Aitken

Honolulu, Hawai’i, 1976

Why Practice?

Taizan Maezumi

This Dharma, the subtle Dharma that has been transmitted by all Buddha-Tathagatas, is abundantly inherent in each individual; yet without practice it will not be manifested, and without enlightenment it will not be perceived. …Since it is the practice of enlightenment, that practice has no beginning and since it is enlightenment within the practice, that realization has no end.

Eihei Dogen, from Bendowa in Shobogenzo

PEOPLE PRACTICE ZEN for many reasons. For some, it is a means to establish better physical and emotional health; for others, it leads into deeper realization of their own non-Buddhist religion or philosophy, and for yet others, Zen practice is the direct, living experience of what Shakyamuni Buddha realized over 2,500 years ago.

People who come to Zen practice are looking for more than mere words or concepts. Words and concepts by themselves are inadequate to help us most fully with the greatest possible awareness, and to enable us to grow spiritually.

In one sense, Zen practice is like regular exercise: if done regularly, it builds strength, gracefulness, and self-confidence, and helps us more effectively respond to the situations we all face every day. And Zen practice is also like a laboratory: Through practice we can continuously test our understanding to see if it is adequate or not. If we never test our beliefs through actual practice, we cannot find out whether they are true or false.

When Shakyamuni Buddha first realized his true nature—and, in so doing, realized the true nature of all beings—he said that from the beginning, all beings are intrinsically perfect, sharing the virtues and wisdom of the awakened Buddha. But, he said, we remain unaware of this simply because our understanding is topsy-turvy. The Buddha spent the remainder of his life after his awakening enlarging upon this statement, and teaching how each of us can realize this truth for ourselves through practice.

But before we have realized it for ourselves, this truth is like an uncut diamond. We could not really say that it is worthless, nor could we say it is something other than a diamond. But until it is skillfully cut and meticulously polished, its sparkling diamond-nature might not be visible. The beautiful color and clarity that make it so highly prized would remain only in the realm of potential.

Of course, we might sincerely believe it to be a diamond. We might even tell others, This is a diamond and is therefore worth a great deal. Yet it would seem peculiar to say, "I don’t